William McIlvanney
Photo Credit: Ian Atkinson
William McIlvanney is the author of the award-winning Laidlaw trilogy, featuring Glasgow’s original maverick detective. Both Laidlaw and The Papers of Tony Veitch gained Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association, while the third in the series, Strange Loyalties, won the Glasgow Herald’s People’s Prize. He died in December 2015.
Ian Rankin is the number one bestselling author of the Inspector Rebus series. The Rebus books have been translated into thirty-six languages and are bestsellers worldwide. He is the recipient of four Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards, including the prestigious Diamond Dagger, and in 2002 he received an OBE for services to literature. He lives in Edinburgh. @beathhigh | ianrankin.net
Strange Loyalties
The remarkable conclusion to the Laidlaw series which launched a genre, from the godfather of Scottish crime fiction
“Laidlaw brought Glasgow to life more viscerally than any book I had read before: the good and the bad, the language and the humour, the violence and the drinking … This book made me realise that pacey, streetwise thrillers didn’t have to be American: we had mean streets enough of our own.”
The Guardian asked great crime writers to pick their favourite crime novels, and Christopher Brookmyre thinks you should be reading William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw.
“I don’t like questions. They invent the answers. The real answers are discovered, before you even know what the question is”
Docherty named number four in top ten list of favourite Scottish novels
SBT
Scottish Book Trust